As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
One example of an information handling system is a storage system such as a small computer system interface (SCSI) storage system or a Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) storage system. Generally, a SCSI storage system includes a controller, hard disk drives and a SCSI accessed fault tolerant enclosure (SAF-TE). Whereas a SAS storage system may include a controller, hard disk drives and expanders that repeat or regenerate the SCSI signals and may provide electrical isolation. The SAS system typically uses a point to point link in lieu of a bus for the SCSI interconnector. The SCSI interconnections generally interact using an expander chip that may be transparent to the software, but not necessarily transparent to the hardware.
The SCSI and SAS storage systems typically follow a standard protocol for electronic interfacing. The protocol allows the storage system to communicate with the peripheral hardware devices such as the hard disks, tape drives, DC-ROM drives connected to the system.
However, despite adhering to a specification, the connected hardware devices may develop compatibility issues with the system based on the physical configuration of the system. For example, a compatibility issue may arise when a hard disk drive is moved from being attached to an internal backplane of a SCSI server to an attached enclosure. Because the internal backplane and enclosure use the same drive carrier, the hard disk drive is easily relocated between the different locations. However, by moving the hard disk drive between the locations, the physical configuration of the storage system is altered. Based on the new configuration, the hard disk drive may not function properly such as causing data loss that results in customer dissatisfaction.